Laughter
by sunshineofthespotlessmind
Summary: How the High functioning sociopath made the Doctor laugh, and how important it became. Now extended with various character perspectives. Reviews  and idea's  appreciated, no slash.
1. Laughter

No one had ever laughed with him before.

Sure, they'd laughed _at _him, plenty of times, hundreds, probably thousands of times, more times than he cared to count. People had been doing it for years, so long he'd long since given up trying., not that he'd ever been good at it. But no-one had ever laughed _with_ him, especially when he hadn't even meant to make a joke.

"_Nothing, just...welcome to London." A wry grin and high, adrenaline filled chuckle._

He hadn't expected it. It hadn't been a joke in his head, just a way to confuse the man and hopefully stop him reporting them. But John had laughed.

John had laughed... and something warm flared inside his chest. Just for a second, before curling up again, but it stopped him, just for a second his brain stopped functioning as the warm feeling spread, close to the drug high but so _much better_.

He'd never made anyone laugh before.

And so he'd tried again when they'd gotten home.

_You invaded Afghanistan._

And John had laughed again, harder this time, and grinned like a maniac, his leg quite forgotten. That tightly wound, most buried but oh, so warm thing, had uncoiled that little bit more, bright and comforting, like he couldn't remember feeling.

Well that wasn't quite true- it had uncurled a little with Mrs Hudson, who called him "dear" and put up with far more from him than anyone else had. How she brought him tea and bothered him about his health and experiments till he wanted to hit something, but at least she bothered to notice.

And it had shifted comfortably when Lestrade had pulled him from the gutter with a wry grin and a helping hand. And all those times afterwards when he had relapsed, and Lestrade had sat with him, sometimes all night, waiting for him to come down. Who had always believed him when he tried again, and again and again. Who had helped him find his work, the thing, the sanity and stability he clung to so hard. It had even happened with Molly once, when she had forgiven him, yet again after a particularly vicious rejoinder. How she kept on forgiving him.

And so the high functioning sociopath discovered he liked the warm feeling. In a world where everything is just a set of connections, and the connections are the only things holding everything together, it's nice to know there is something else. Something comfortable that sits in his chest, which makes him warm when the doctor laughs.

And suddenly it becomes important that the doctor keeps on laughing. Maybe there was something to this "friends" business after all.


	2. Smile

DCI Lestrade has seen Sherlock's face in almost every conceivable expression. He's seen him scowl, and snarl, and stare more intently at a corpse than he ever has at anything living. He's seen him ignore everything for days on end, and has come to breathe a sigh of relief whenever he sees the euphoric gleam in Sherlock's eyes, because it means he's occupied, and the closest thing Sherlock Holmes can be happy.

And he remembers the darker days, when he would hold the boy the man used to be as he came down from the high, shaking and sweating and incoherent. When he first took him home from the station, listening in wonder to the stream of information that came from the drug addled lips, as sweat poured of his body and his eyes glazed with whatever crap he'd been pumping into his veins that week.

He thanks God daily that He never gave him Sherlock's mind.

But he's never seen him smile, and this _worries_ Lestrade, more than he will ever let show. Oh he's seen the man smirk, and sneer and fake it so many times, because there is ice between the world and Sherlock Holmes, a thick, impenetrable barrier to keep the world, and all its trivialities, as far away as possible. But it worries him, and it worries him how much he cares, that the man never seems happy. Not just high on the thrills of a case, but really, truly, honest to god happy.

It keeps him awake sometimes, as he lies by his wife and listens to the sounds of silence. He supposes any decent therapist would say he was projecting- having no children of his own, he's 'adopted' the man, directing his paternal inclinations that get no other outlet, but sometimes, when he's listening to him rattle off some new deduction that is frankly incredible, whatever Sherlock says, he feels such a _pride _in him. And prays Sherlock won't notice, because then he'll never hear the end of it.

Lestrade knows, though Sherlock probably doesn't, that the high functioning sociopath thing is only true as far as Sherlock lets it. He keeps this information to himself, because no-one will believe him, not Donovan, not Anderson, especially not Sherlock, but it's true all the same. A sociopath doesn't care if people don't like him. A sociopath doesn't care what people call him, whether he's a freak or a psycho or a murderer waiting to happen. But Sherlock does. Dear God, does Sherlock care.

So when he sees the new man, the Doctor, at the flat and then at the crime scene, he treats him with a certain amount of caution. Sherlock actually seems to like this man, as far as Sherlock likes anyone, and if this man recoils, as people always do, it'll send Sherlock reeling.

But he doesn't. He follows Sherlock up three flights of stairs on a cane, and waits, patiently, for Sherlock to finish looking. And then he calls him brilliant. Twice. And Dr Watson isn't looking, but it's like a light comes on behind those brilliant eyes. It's gone again, almost instantly, but Lestrade sees, and realises that perhaps Sherlock really _doesn't_ know that he worries, or how proud he is. Perhaps the world's first, best consulting detective's high powered perception is fairly limited.

He needs to be told. He needs to be told that people care, that want him to be happy. And the doctor tells him, and puts up with everything, and can even get Sherlock to be civil. Dr Watson probably doesn't notice the change, doesn't notice the smidgen more tolerance Sherlock now has for the stupidity of the general public, but Lestrade does, and it helps it him sleep.

The Doctor can make Sherlock good. It's more than he ever managed.


	3. Cleaning

Mrs Hudson paused at the door of 221B, listening to sounds from inside. She wasn't scared, or nervous of walking in on something intimate (a rather scathing set down from Sherlock had put paid to that theory) but when Sherlock had a gun in his hands, it was better for her, and her wall, if she didn't walk in unexpectedly.

Silence. She'd knock, but if Sherlock was in one of his moods, it was best not to give him warning.

She gripped her feather duster tightly to her and pushed the door open- and when no icy rejoinder spewed forth, hesitantly poked her head round the door. A flat, empty but for the skull she could have _sworn_ she'd stolen last week and hidden in her freezer, greeted her.

The living room wall seemed to have survived any major damage this week, and so had the two bedrooms. But the kitchen...she shuddered. A Petri dish contained some form of green mould that had been there for nearly a week, with some pale pink substance she didn't want to consider too closely dripping steadily onto if from a burette. Admittedly, it was an improvement on last week, when she had discovered a heap of something she could _swear_ had attempted to get away from the tap water. And the week before that, when she had been greeted by a human head suspended in what she hoped was vinegar.

But _still_! The boy was getting downright cheeky, leaving feet in the freezer, and she shuddered to remember the time she'd opened the microwave to find an eyeball staring back at her.

She'd mentioned it to Sherlock of course, and the cheeky sod had told her that if she didn't go _snooping_ she wouldn't find these things! She didn't snoop! She just... tidied up a little. Those boys would go haring off at any hour, leaving the flat looking like a bomb had gone off. So she put a few things away, because... well if she didn't do it who would? _Someone _had to take care of him, and that doctor was as bad as he was.

She'd be the first to admit he could be scary, with his icy stare and icier rage, but she remembered when he'd been referred to her by Lestrade, her sister's daughter's brother in law. He'd only been a boy then and now was forever, at least to her.

And he was good to her, most days, making her soothers when her hip played up, and that first time, making sure her brute of a husband stayed gone. She was fond of him, she really was, bad tempers and all. And that mind... it still amazed her, and she was glad he was staying with her, however much she complained about the state of the kitchen. She only did it because he expected her to. Somewhere along the way it had come to mean more than a simple argument. It was her way of making sure he was alright, like the snooping..._tidying_...was to make sure he was eating, if not enough, then _something._

Sometimes she wondered if the Doctor ever realised just how good he was for her boy. He was somehow calming and supportive at the same time, when Sherlock was running a mile a minute, seconds away from crashing. She remembered the first time she'd met him, stood outside with a cane in his hand and it hadn't struck her till later how much calmer Sherlock appeared with him, more centred.

So yes, she flicked a duster around occasionally, and yes, _sometimes_, and she would like to stress that it _was_ only sometimes; she went to the shops and got a few essentials, because honestly, the two of them never seemed to eat. Sherlock was far too thin as it was, always gadding about London like the world was ending, and Dr Watson was no better, running off after Sherlock like he hadn't a care in the world!

She never mentioned these cleaning expeditions, not after the eyeball incident, and neither did Sherlock, but then he never mentioned anything unless he could help it. But it made her feel better.

What she would never know, because Sherlock would never tell her, was that when the two men would come home in the evening, Sherlock would look round him and smile, just for a second. His skull was missing again.


	4. Understanding

John never tried to change Sherlock. Like shoving against a side of a mountain, it would mean expending a lot of effort that got you absolutely nowhere, and he has better things to do with his time. Sherlock does not like to be poked or prodded, psychologically or physically, and the bastard gives as good as he gets. Try for a second to psychoanalyse him and you'll be tearing your own hair out as every secret you've ever had comes rolling off his tongue. And then some.

So it always confused him when people asked him how he did it. Did _what?_ He didn't _do_ anything, he never had done. All he'd done was move in with the man. The irritating, arrogant, brilliant idiot, who did stupid things to prove he was clever. You'd have thought the two things were mutually exclusive, but no, somewhere in the primordial clouds of broiling chaos that seethed and clashed in his brain, Sherlock managed, somehow, to come up with an intelligence so staggering it was almost ignorant.

John had never told anyone, but once, just once, he thought he could see the world as Sherlock saw it. The memory still wakes him up at night, sweating and euphoric.

They had been standing in an old alleyway, because these dramatic, life changing moments never seem to happen somewhere remotely habitable. Or anywhere other than in the pouring rain. It was one of those nights where London seemed to huddle in on itself against the cold, and small, and sad and so very old.

In those conditions, no-one notices two men standing in a doorway under a flickering streetlamp. In this part of town, figures loitering are taken as local colour, and if you happen to see one pass something to the other and walk away hurriedly, well, it's none of your business, isn't it.

John was tired. The night was cold, the wind cutting into his already saturated skin, and the flickering of the streetlamp was beginning to annoy him. But Sherlock just stood there, staring out into the rain, fascinated.

_What's so bloody interesting? _He feels like asking, and he must have made some noise, because Sherlock turns, still lost in thought. And his eyes, those soft, almost grey, almost blue orbs that are so impenetrable most of the time, are open. Fathomless.

John in mesmerised. He knows he's staring, that Sherlock is beginning to frown in confusion, but he just can't tear his eyes away. _How?_ How can you be confused at the world when this is what you see? How can you be satisfied with normal, how does the mundane, the ordinary ever placate you if you can see like this, see the connections, the tiny little things that somehow, everyone else misses. How do people not _realise? _Are they really so thick, so slow, so dull, that they miss what is suddenly so. Goddamn. _Obvious._

Something about those eyes draws him in, just for a moment, a fleeting second, pulling him down and down and deeper and deeper into a spinning web of connections and limits and details, a maze of lights and flashing points, where links between two things, two totally unconnected things, make whole new sections of the endless series light up. Where, if you can just find the one spot, the one thread that spreads from the centre and connects _everything_, well... you could die happy.

Because you would understand. You would _know_.

Then Sherlock blinks, and its gone. The barriers are back up, and the shields are foolproof, but it's far, far too late. John's already seen. He's seen, and he's hooked, and now Sherlock is stuck with him for life. He's not leaving anyone so extraordinary, teeth in the freezer or not.

Sherlock doesn't know what he gave John that day. He doesn't know _how_ John gets it, why he runs after the unusual with such persistence. It's enough to know that he does.

And when people ask John how he puts up with it, the haring over London, the moods, the arrogance and coldness and insufferable know-it-all attitude that makes up Sherlock Holmes and drives everyone else _insane_, he just shakes his head sadly. They don't understand.


End file.
